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The Zapatistas invite 1.500 activists from all over the world to a ‘Little School of Liberty’ in Chiapas to learn from their experiment with autonomy.

(ROARMag) It was 10 years ago, on January 1, 2003, when — having exhausted the road of dialogue with the government as well the one of a “big R” Revolution that would overthrow the Mexican state — the Zapatistas of Chiapas decided to “abandon the politics of demands, and with it, all contact with the state.” Instead, they chose to concentrate on building their own autonomous, horizontal forms of self-government within their own territories and with their own means.

In other words, to ignore the state as an institution and “act as if they had already won”, comrade ‘Bruce Lee’ of the CCRI in San Cristobal declared during the commemoration of the 1994 uprising that “we don’t have to ask the government’s permission to be autonomous.” Or, as Major Infantry Insurgent Moses put it in an interview with Gloria Muñoz:

The dialogue with the government didn’t work but it enriched us, because we met more people and it gave us more ideas. After the “Color of the Earth march” in 2001 we said that with or without a law we were going to build our government the way we wanted.

It was 10 years ago, on August 9, 2003, when the Zapatistas announced the death of the Aguascalientes and the birth of the Caracoles. Five caracoles were created, each with its own Junta de Buen Gobierno (JBG) established within it, responsible for its own Zapatista Autonomous Rebel Municipal Zone (MAREZ). The five caracoles are the following:

“The Mother of Caracoles — Sea of Dreams” (La Realidad)

“The Whirlwind of Our Words” (Morelia — 17 de Noviembre)

“Resistance Until the New Dawn” (La Garrucha — Fransisco Gomez)

“The Caracol That Speaks for All” (Robero Barrios)

“Resistance and Rebellion for Humanity” (Oventik)

The municipalities and communities in each zone are not only divided on the basis of geographical criteria but in other ways (like ethnic composition and distance from the caracol) as well. Each caracol has its own autonomous health clinic, normally a primary and/or secondary school, and each of them is also involved in one form or another with one of the five Projects of Zapatismo: health, education, agro-ecology, politics, and information technology.

(thenextweb.com) If you ever thought of all anonymous Internet users as cowards behind a keyboard, it’s high time to think again. According to reports, Anonymous Mexico is going head-to-head with one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the world, the Mexican cartel Los Zetas. Not only has the hacktivist group threatened to reveal names, but it has also started making good to its threats.

How did it start?

Anonymous’ campaign against the cartel could be a response to the alleged kidnapping to one of the group’s members in the city of Veracruz, if a video published on YouTube several weeks ago is to be believed. In the video, a man wearing the famous Guy Fawkes mask expressly threatens the cartel: if the hostage is not released, the voice says, Anonymous will publicly name and shame policemen, officials, taxi drivers and journalists it believes to be linked to the cartel.

Taking action online

Although the authenticity of the video itself is controversial, a recent action seems to confirm that Anonymous in Mexico are indeed at war with the cartel. Indeed, one of Anonymous’s favorite tactics is website defacement, and it’s exactly what just happened to the website of a Mexican politician suspected of connections to the cartel, according to the local media. The page is still defaced as we write; here is what it looks like (“es Zeta” meaning “is Zeta”):

More generally, Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists and bloggers. As we recently mentioned in our previous post ‘How Facebook’s name policy silenced a blogger in Honduras‘, “Narcos” have increasingly targeted bloggers and Twitter users who were using the Internet to denounce crime.

Should it be confirmed that an Anonymous member has been kidnapped by Los Zetas, this could well have been a reaction from the cartel following online posts against the organization. If Anonymous decides to go ahead and reveal names, there no doubt the cartel will try and retaliate again. In other words, hacktivists should better make sure they’re as anonymous as they claim to be.

Transcript: Anonymous from Veracruz, Mexico, and the world, we want you to know that a member has been kidnapped when he was doing Paperstorm in our city.

We demand his release. We want the army and the navy to know that we are fed up of the criminal group Zetas, who have concentrated on kidnapping, stealing and blackmailing in different ways. One of them is charging every honest and hardworking citizen of Veracruz who busts their rears working day after day to feed their families.

We are fed up of journalists and newspapers of Xalapa, Córdoba and Orizaba because they are constantly crapping on honest authorities like the army and the navy.

We are fed up with taxi drivers, commanders and “police-zetas” officers of Xalapa, Córdoba, Orizaba, Nogales, Río Blanco and Camerinos… who are chickens and have made themselves the most loyal servants of these (expletive).

For the time being, we won´t post photos or the names … of the taxi drivers, the journalists or the newspapers nor of the police officers, but if needed, we will publish them including their addresses, to see if by doing so the government will arrest them.

We can´t defend ourselves with a weapon, but if we can do this with their cars, houses, bars, brothels and everything else in their possession … It won´t be difficult. We all know who they are and where they are.

(Images with sound of explosions)

You made a huge mistake by taking one of us. Release him. And if anything happens to him, you (expletive) will always remember this upcoming November 5th .

Knowledge is free. We are Anonymous. We are a legion. We don’t forgive. We don’t forget. Expect us.”

(indymedia.org) The European Collectives Nodo Solidale (Italy), Zapatista “Marisol” Collective of Lugano (Switzerland), and Nomads of XM24 (Italy), which make up the Internationalist Platform for Resistance and Self-Initiative Weaving Autonomies (PIRATA), organized a brigade for the observation of the violation of the rights of native peoples in the municipality of Santiago Xanica, Oaxaca, México, in which activists from France and the Spanish State also participated. The brigade traveled through the municipality from March 14 to March 21, 2011.

The task that the International Brigade set for itself has been to listen, understand, relate, and make public what is happening in the community of Santiago Xanica. In recent months the townspeople of Xanica have been denouncing outrageous violations and abuses by PRI party members and power groups against the local Committee in Defense of Indigenous Rights (CODEDI Xanica), Adherent to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, and against the general population.